10 ms·

Quantum Gravity Expert Says "Philosophical Superficiality" Has Harmed Physics

147 points by tomhoward 12y ago

cromwellian 12y ago
There seems to be a contradiction of his bashing of super-string theorists exploring "what if" theories disconnected from reality, and his elevation of philosophers who do the same. If anything, the super-string theorists are more like philosophers in the sense that they are working mainly with thought experiments, which they then try and reconcile with reality. If you read stuff written by cognitive philosophers on the mind, they do this all the time, proposing postulates and thought experiments, and then trying to rationalize them with the assumptions about the real world, often, with no reference to actual neuroscience. Krauss et al's statements on philosophy are simply that when you build a particle accelerator, walk into a lab, or start working out mathematical theories, you don't start with philosophy of science. That's a backwards rationalization of how science is done, constructing it's underpinnings/justification after the fact. Most scientists who conducted experiments and proposed hypotheses throughout history did not start by first making sure what they were doing aligned with the Philosophy of Science. And indeed, children conduct scientific investigations all the time blissfully unaware of the philosophical underpinnings justifying it. I'll go one further and say that the idea that you never need to do "what if" theories, but merely explore the existing ones to their ends, can lead to local optima. It is certainly possible you will run into the limits of the conceptual underpinning of the theory in which no iterative refinement can fix it in a way that leads to superior understanding. Philosophy is useful, in the same way that logic and mathematics are useful, to explore formal systems, especially when the real world experiments are impossible or unethical to conduct. But the limits of philosophy are also born out in the assumptions used -- e.g. arguments about free will or consciousness, debates are artificial definitions that do not measurably or provably reflect the real nature of real things. Perhaps a better commentary here: http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/08/23/accommodationism-from-a-physicist/ http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/08/23/accommoda...
- Intermernet 12y ago
  I hate to say it, but I have a feeling that the non-string-theory camp (Rovelli, Smolin etc.) have a fairly large (probably justifiable) chip on their shoulder regarding the amount of funding and support that string theory research has had over the last few decades, in comparison to "competing" theories. It's a pity to see this come out in some of Rovelli's statements in this interview, because the rest of it is so wonderfully measured and thoughtful.
  - grizzles 12y ago
    It needed to be said. Nowadays theoretical physicists are often working on theories 100 years ahead of even the chance of empirical validation. I for one would like to see a greater portion of funding going towards experimental physics. Here is a startup analogy. One is having a dream about building google and writing a paper about it. How it might work, eg. 20% time, etc. The other is actually building google.
    - afafsd 12y ago
      We're already spending vast amounts of money on high-energy experiment, and building ever-larger particle smashers seems to have limited payoff from here on out. I don't know how to figure out quantum gravity. I don't even know how to do an experiment which could distinguish between different models of quantum gravity. But I do know there's plenty of other interesting stuff (much of which is actually useful) we don't know about physics at other scales which we can spend our time and money on.
      - lutusp 12y ago
        > We're already spending vast amounts of money on high-energy experiment, and building ever-larger particle smashers seems to have limited payoff from here on out. This sentiment has a long and storied past. http://patentlyo.com/patent/2011/01/tracing-the-quote-everything-that-can-be-invented-has-been-invented.html http://patentlyo.com/patent/2011/01/tracing-the-quote-everyt... > But I do know there's plenty of other interesting stuff (much of which is actually useful) we don't know about physics at other scales which we can spend our time and money on. Yes, true, but the low-level stuff only describes. Theory formation attempts to explain. Explanations are required for science.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
aluhut 12y ago
What is this "recent bashing by Stephen Hawking, Lawrence Krauss and Neil deGrasse Tyson"?
- 3rd3 12y ago
  Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is dead. Lawrence Krauss: Philosophy used to be a field that had content, but then 'natural philosophy' became physics, and physics has only continued to make inroads. Every time there's a leap in physics, it encroaches on these areas that philosophers have carefully sequestered away to themselves, and so then you have this natural resentment on the part of philosophers. Neil Tyson DeGrasse: Up until early 20th century philosophers had material contributions to make to the physical sciences. Pretty much after quantum mechanics, remember the philosopher is the would be scientist but without a laboratory, right? And so what happens is, the 1920s come in, we learn about the expanding universe in the same decade as we learn about quantum physics, each of which falls so far out of what you can deduce from your armchair that the whole community of philosophers that previously had added materially to the thinking of the physical scientists was rendered essentially obsolete, and that point, and I have yet to see a contribution — this will get me in trouble with all manner of philosophers — but call me later and correct me if you think I’ve missed somebody here. But, philosophy has basically parted ways from the frontier of the physical sciences, when there was a day when they were one and the same. Isaac Newton was a natural philosopher, the word physicist didn’t even exist in any important way back then. So, I’m disappointed because there is a lot of brainpower there, that might have otherwise contributed mightily, but today simply does not. It’s not that there can’t be other philosophical subjects, there is religious philosophy, and ethical philosophy, and political philosophy, plenty of stuff for the philosophers to do, but the frontier of the physical sciences does not appear to be among them.
  - jchrisa 12y ago
    One deep end to jump in to philosophy here is the concept of http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervenience http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervenience
  - tim333 12y ago
    >Up until early 20th century philosophers had material contributions to make to the physical sciences I think what changed was physics became much harder to understand. Pre Einstein it was fairly easy for someone without much physics training to grasp Newtonian stuff. With the advent of general relativity and quantum mechanics it became hard to understand without years of study of physics which most philosophers do not have which led to their work being not very useful to the physicists. However philosophical insights by people who do understand the physics can be good in my opinion. Feynman seemed good, for example. Simple stuff http://lesswrong.com/lw/99c/transcript_richard_feynman_on_why_questions/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/99c/transcript_richard_feynman_on_wh... a bit more subtle, philosophical at the beginning: http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_28.html http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_28.html Feynman and philosophy: https://philosophynow.org/issues/59/Richard_Feynman_Accidental_Philosopher https://philosophynow.org/issues/59/Richard_Feynman_Accident...
ExpiredLink 12y ago
> You see: the scientists that talk philosophy down are simply superficial: they have a philosophy (usually some ill-digested mixture of Popper and Kuhn) and think that this is the “true” philosophy, and do not realize that this has limitations. So true.
- protonfish 12y ago
  Hardly. What definition of "philosophy" is in use here? It sounds like he just means "beliefs" which, of course, everyone has. If "philosophy" means ideas that do not need facts, reason, or testability then it is just nonsense. Philosophy that requires these qualities is called "science."
  - lutusp 12y ago
    > If "philosophy" means ideas that do not need facts, reason, or testability then it is just nonsense. That's philosophy's territory, now that we have science. Philosophers don't have to, and feel no need to, reality-test their speculations. And I see I may be reflecting your views on this topic.
Elrac 12y ago
OK, "Critical views of science in the news" is probably a useful avenue of "hard looking" and quality control for science. But I think it behooves us to be a little more critical in our choice of critics. This struck me when the author, in his introduction, mentioned a previous Q&A with telepathy proponent Rupert Sheldrake. Sheldrake only gets a brief mention in this piece as a critic of science, and I hasten to add that I don't have any beef with the article from that point on. For anyone who doesn't know, Sheldrake has for years been trying to convince people that telepathy is real. To this end, he's done a series of experiments which had the kind of inconclusive results you'd expect, yet in spite of a dearth of convincing, published results, in spite of a global failure to replicate his results, he keeps badgering science to take him seriously. Having been met with apathy and mild derision, he now blames science on his failure to be taken seriously. So yes, Sheldrake is a "science critic." So are many of the purveyors of homeopathy, of miracle cancer cures, of coffee enemas, of dowsing and of Intelligent Design. Science is empirical, and people without evidence like to call this a shortcoming of science. So my question is: how much debunking, how much finger pointing and pantsless emperors is required before we can in good conscience exclude certain groups of people from discussions about the philosophy of science? Those discussions are important, no doubt - and this is why I think we should be wary of allowing them to be bogged down by the contributions of frauds and crackpots.
- jchrisa 12y ago
  They have to keep the conversation lighthearted, or else there's a chance we might actually talk about all the real problems with taking a scientistic view of the world. That is, the crackpots are way less threatening than someone with real critiques.
- apalmer 12y ago
  The answer as to when can we exclude certain groups from the discussion is never. If Sheldrake or whoever makes a valid point then it is what it is.
- alphydan 12y ago
  > Sheldrake has for years been trying to convince people that telepathy is real. To this end, he's done a series of experiments which had the kind of inconclusive results you'd expect. Do you have a reference? The dog experiment seems statistically significant (http://www.sheldrake.org/research/animal-powers/a-dog-that-seems-to-know-when-his-owner-is-coming-home-videotaped-experiments-and-observations http://www.sheldrake.org/research/animal-powers/a-dog-that-s..., shows ANOVA, F-value (df 2,22)=20.46; p<0.0001). ). What exactly about that experiment is inconclusive? Note that I'm not saying telepathy exists. I'm discussing an experiment for which I have no sensible explanation. Is there some data/papers/methods I'm missing?
winterismute 12y ago
I had the privilege of meeting Carlo Rovelli (who attended university in my hometown, many years before me) in a public event targeting people that, like me, were at the time finishing high school and had to choose what to do with their lives. We showed up already bored, waiting for the usual adults who would explain us why to study this and not that, what are the many possible career paths achievable by that, which economic sectors were growing and how, and so on. In fact, some of the speakers did mostly that. On the contrary, Rovelli started to explain how he did not know what to do after school, and that he went to university initially because his family would have forced him to work as a plumber with his uncle if he decided not to go. He then advised us to choose to do only what we feel passionate about, and to distrust whoever, truth in hand, will explain us that by studying X we will be able to enter sector Y and achieve great success in life. It can seem trivial stuff, but when you are 18 and are being told those things by a humble but successful person, it really empowers you. He is also fairly easy to "approach", he himself came to speak to us after the event, joking about the fact we should not cut our hair "just to get a job" (I haven't since then, and I am 28 and working), hence I am not surprised he answers to people's comment on the interview, or that he is active on physics.stackexchange, for example. I have studied computer science and got interested in physics and philosophy of science thanks to him, he kind of embodies my idea of science, and of civil responsibility, and I must say I have been a bit disappointed to see that also the academic world is full of "scientists" that underestimate the value of philosophy or other related subjects, or that teach students not to question "too much" what they are doing, preventing them to really see the "big picture" behind knowledge.
mparr4 12y ago
I studied physics at the University of Maryland, one of the better (top 20) physics programs in the US. I was surprised at how often questions were answered with "that's for the philosophers to think about." Granted, there's a lot of material to cover, I don't think that's an appropriate response–especially when delivered with contempt, as it typically was.
- bkcooper 12y ago
  What are some examples of the questions that got this answer?
  - Balgair 12y ago
    "So wait, if QM says you can be everywhere at once, are you?" "If GR means all the laws are related to the reference frame, does that mean all the things in it are relative too, like religion?" "What if Dark matter really is more than just stuff that falls down. What if there are intelligent clouds there? What are their ethics like?" "No but really, what is the definition of life?" "Ok, so fetal stem cells, but what if we took a blood sem cell and then back tracked that into a fetal one. Is that wrong?" All of these can take the 'Copenhagen Interpretation' given to undergrads. The Copenhagen Interpretation states: Shut up and calculate.
- mtdewcmu 12y ago
  Coming from a professor, I, myself, would always presume that there was a worthwhile lesson in those kinds of short remarks. It sounds like they were possibly steering students away from questions that could not be resolved empirically, which would place them outside the scope of physics; those kinds of questions could also be debated endlessly and derail the class.
jorangreef 12y ago
The interview tends towards scientism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism), "the belief in the universal applicability of the scientific method and approach, and the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning to the exclusion of other viewpoints" or methods, for example the historical method. As a result, Rovelli ventures outside his circle of competence when he views Christianity as a set of "written-down beliefs" disconnected from actual historical events. In fact, for someone interested in ancient history, the primary and secondary sources for understanding the historical origin of Christianity tell a remarkably different story, namely that there is a very strong connection between the historical person of Christ and the people that followed him. Specifically, that these people followed him on the basis of his historical person, his death and resurrection, of which they were fully convinced, often at great personal cost. As Paul of Tarsus said under trial, being someone who had previously physically persecuted the early Christians: "Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead?" For Paul, it was not a question of probability or "how often does this happen every day" (which would be frequentism), but of historical happening, did it happen? He, like Thomas, would not follow the risen Christ unless he saw him himself, and this is what he (according to the sources), amongst others, claimed to have happened. So that Christians today (as with Christians then) are Christians on the basis of their understanding and acceptance of the historicity and meaning of the events concerning Christ. For Paul's own words, and a remarkable piece of ancient history, see his letter to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 15:3-9. Note also that our knowledge of Christ as an actual historical person is not limited to the writings of those that followed him and were devoted to him. For a good introduction to the historical method and its application to Christ, see Paul Barnett, historian, "Jesus and the Logic of History": http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-History-Studies-Biblical-Theology/dp/0830826033 http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-History-Studies-Biblical-Theolog...
- cdi 12y ago
  >He, like Thomas, would not follow the risen Christ unless he saw him himself An extraordinary statement without evidence. People today have all kinds of beliefs without evidence. People also could lie, be pressured into belief by conformity, have hallucinations, etc. Not to mention people 2000 years ago didn't have todays strict standards delineating fact from beliefs. There are numerous contradictions and discrepancies in these "accounts". The historicity of Jesus' resurrection is very much in doubt by the preeminent new testament scholars: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHJE7cetkB4#t=81 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHJE7cetkB4#t=81 And indeed the historical method can't be seriously compared to the scientific method, because it is vulnerable to errors in the accounts, falsification, forgery, intentional lying, biased interpretation. While science relies on repeatability.
ekm2 12y ago
This reminds me of a quote by Richard Feynman: Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds
- acornax 12y ago
  Kind of a bad quote. Ornithology would be useful to birds if they could understand it.
  - trhway 12y ago
    primary example of birds benefiting from ornithology :) http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/06/vladimir-putin-cranes-hang-glider http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/06/vladimir-putin-... If only some philosopher of science could lead the scientists the same way ( to the former USSR citizens - "poruchik, molchat!" :)
QuantumChaos 12y ago
I really liked this article. The author gave real substantive answers to almost all the questions. I would have liked to have more detail on his critique of the "guess and check" approach to science. My own opinion is that there is a very good reason why scientific progress follows the pattern he describes, of new theories being based on either new experiments, or in depth analysis of existing theories. The reason is that science relies on belief in objective reality, and yet we don't know what objective reality is. So in order to reason about what the universe really is, the best and only starting point is our current model(s) of physics. The moment we make an assumption about what reality is that isn't based in physical theory, we are liable to be wrong. For example, Newton was criticized for his theory of gravity, because people knew that reality was composed of little machine-like objects, interacting at a microscopic scale. There was no room in this worldview for Newton's "occult" force of gravity which acted at a distance.

147 points by tomhoward 12y ago

There seems to be a contradiction of his bashing of super-string theorists exploring "what if" theories disconnected from reality, and his elevation of philosophers who do the same. If anything, the super-string theorists are more like philosophers in the sense that they are working mainly with thought experiments, which they then try and reconcile with reality. If you read stuff written by cognitive philosophers on the mind, they do this all the time, proposing postulates and thought experiments, and then trying to rationalize them with the assumptions about the real world, often, with no reference to actual neuroscience. Krauss et al's statements on philosophy are simply that when you build a particle accelerator, walk into a lab, or start working out mathematical theories, you don't start with philosophy of science. That's a backwards rationalization of how science is done, constructing it's underpinnings/justification after the fact. Most scientists who conducted experiments and proposed hypotheses throughout history did not start by first making sure what they were doing aligned with the Philosophy of Science. And indeed, children conduct scientific investigations all the time blissfully unaware of the philosophical underpinnings justifying it. I'll go one further and say that the idea that you never need to do "what if" theories, but merely explore the existing ones to their ends, can lead to local optima. It is certainly possible you will run into the limits of the conceptual underpinning of the theory in which no iterative refinement can fix it in a way that leads to superior understanding. Philosophy is useful, in the same way that logic and mathematics are useful, to explore formal systems, especially when the real world experiments are impossible or unethical to conduct. But the limits of philosophy are also born out in the assumptions used -- e.g. arguments about free will or consciousness, debates are artificial definitions that do not measurably or provably reflect the real nature of real things. Perhaps a better commentary here: http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/08/23/accommodationism-from-a-physicist/ http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/08/23/accommoda...

Intermernet 12y ago
I hate to say it, but I have a feeling that the non-string-theory camp (Rovelli, Smolin etc.) have a fairly large (probably justifiable) chip on their shoulder regarding the amount of funding and support that string theory research has had over the last few decades, in comparison to "competing" theories. It's a pity to see this come out in some of Rovelli's statements in this interview, because the rest of it is so wonderfully measured and thoughtful.
- grizzles 12y ago
  It needed to be said. Nowadays theoretical physicists are often working on theories 100 years ahead of even the chance of empirical validation. I for one would like to see a greater portion of funding going towards experimental physics. Here is a startup analogy. One is having a dream about building google and writing a paper about it. How it might work, eg. 20% time, etc. The other is actually building google.
  - afafsd 12y ago
    We're already spending vast amounts of money on high-energy experiment, and building ever-larger particle smashers seems to have limited payoff from here on out. I don't know how to figure out quantum gravity. I don't even know how to do an experiment which could distinguish between different models of quantum gravity. But I do know there's plenty of other interesting stuff (much of which is actually useful) we don't know about physics at other scales which we can spend our time and money on.
    - lutusp 12y ago
      > We're already spending vast amounts of money on high-energy experiment, and building ever-larger particle smashers seems to have limited payoff from here on out. This sentiment has a long and storied past. http://patentlyo.com/patent/2011/01/tracing-the-quote-everything-that-can-be-invented-has-been-invented.html http://patentlyo.com/patent/2011/01/tracing-the-quote-everyt... > But I do know there's plenty of other interesting stuff (much of which is actually useful) we don't know about physics at other scales which we can spend our time and money on. Yes, true, but the low-level stuff only describes. Theory formation attempts to explain. Explanations are required for science.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

aluhut 12y ago

What is this "recent bashing by Stephen Hawking, Lawrence Krauss and Neil deGrasse Tyson"?

3rd3 12y ago
Stephen Hawking: Philosophy is dead. Lawrence Krauss: Philosophy used to be a field that had content, but then 'natural philosophy' became physics, and physics has only continued to make inroads. Every time there's a leap in physics, it encroaches on these areas that philosophers have carefully sequestered away to themselves, and so then you have this natural resentment on the part of philosophers. Neil Tyson DeGrasse: Up until early 20th century philosophers had material contributions to make to the physical sciences. Pretty much after quantum mechanics, remember the philosopher is the would be scientist but without a laboratory, right? And so what happens is, the 1920s come in, we learn about the expanding universe in the same decade as we learn about quantum physics, each of which falls so far out of what you can deduce from your armchair that the whole community of philosophers that previously had added materially to the thinking of the physical scientists was rendered essentially obsolete, and that point, and I have yet to see a contribution — this will get me in trouble with all manner of philosophers — but call me later and correct me if you think I’ve missed somebody here. But, philosophy has basically parted ways from the frontier of the physical sciences, when there was a day when they were one and the same. Isaac Newton was a natural philosopher, the word physicist didn’t even exist in any important way back then. So, I’m disappointed because there is a lot of brainpower there, that might have otherwise contributed mightily, but today simply does not. It’s not that there can’t be other philosophical subjects, there is religious philosophy, and ethical philosophy, and political philosophy, plenty of stuff for the philosophers to do, but the frontier of the physical sciences does not appear to be among them.
- jchrisa 12y ago
  One deep end to jump in to philosophy here is the concept of http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervenience http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervenience
- tim333 12y ago
  >Up until early 20th century philosophers had material contributions to make to the physical sciences I think what changed was physics became much harder to understand. Pre Einstein it was fairly easy for someone without much physics training to grasp Newtonian stuff. With the advent of general relativity and quantum mechanics it became hard to understand without years of study of physics which most philosophers do not have which led to their work being not very useful to the physicists. However philosophical insights by people who do understand the physics can be good in my opinion. Feynman seemed good, for example. Simple stuff http://lesswrong.com/lw/99c/transcript_richard_feynman_on_why_questions/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/99c/transcript_richard_feynman_on_wh... a bit more subtle, philosophical at the beginning: http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_28.html http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_28.html Feynman and philosophy: https://philosophynow.org/issues/59/Richard_Feynman_Accidental_Philosopher https://philosophynow.org/issues/59/Richard_Feynman_Accident...

ExpiredLink 12y ago

> You see: the scientists that talk philosophy down are simply superficial: they have a philosophy (usually some ill-digested mixture of Popper and Kuhn) and think that this is the “true” philosophy, and do not realize that this has limitations. So true.

protonfish 12y ago
Hardly. What definition of "philosophy" is in use here? It sounds like he just means "beliefs" which, of course, everyone has. If "philosophy" means ideas that do not need facts, reason, or testability then it is just nonsense. Philosophy that requires these qualities is called "science."
- lutusp 12y ago
  > If "philosophy" means ideas that do not need facts, reason, or testability then it is just nonsense. That's philosophy's territory, now that we have science. Philosophers don't have to, and feel no need to, reality-test their speculations. And I see I may be reflecting your views on this topic.

Elrac 12y ago

OK, "Critical views of science in the news" is probably a useful avenue of "hard looking" and quality control for science. But I think it behooves us to be a little more critical in our choice of critics. This struck me when the author, in his introduction, mentioned a previous Q&A with telepathy proponent Rupert Sheldrake. Sheldrake only gets a brief mention in this piece as a critic of science, and I hasten to add that I don't have any beef with the article from that point on. For anyone who doesn't know, Sheldrake has for years been trying to convince people that telepathy is real. To this end, he's done a series of experiments which had the kind of inconclusive results you'd expect, yet in spite of a dearth of convincing, published results, in spite of a global failure to replicate his results, he keeps badgering science to take him seriously. Having been met with apathy and mild derision, he now blames science on his failure to be taken seriously. So yes, Sheldrake is a "science critic." So are many of the purveyors of homeopathy, of miracle cancer cures, of coffee enemas, of dowsing and of Intelligent Design. Science is empirical, and people without evidence like to call this a shortcoming of science. So my question is: how much debunking, how much finger pointing and pantsless emperors is required before we can in good conscience exclude certain groups of people from discussions about the philosophy of science? Those discussions are important, no doubt - and this is why I think we should be wary of allowing them to be bogged down by the contributions of frauds and crackpots.

jchrisa 12y ago
They have to keep the conversation lighthearted, or else there's a chance we might actually talk about all the real problems with taking a scientistic view of the world. That is, the crackpots are way less threatening than someone with real critiques.
apalmer 12y ago
The answer as to when can we exclude certain groups from the discussion is never. If Sheldrake or whoever makes a valid point then it is what it is.
alphydan 12y ago
> Sheldrake has for years been trying to convince people that telepathy is real. To this end, he's done a series of experiments which had the kind of inconclusive results you'd expect. Do you have a reference? The dog experiment seems statistically significant (http://www.sheldrake.org/research/animal-powers/a-dog-that-seems-to-know-when-his-owner-is-coming-home-videotaped-experiments-and-observations http://www.sheldrake.org/research/animal-powers/a-dog-that-s..., shows ANOVA, F-value (df 2,22)=20.46; p<0.0001). ). What exactly about that experiment is inconclusive? Note that I'm not saying telepathy exists. I'm discussing an experiment for which I have no sensible explanation. Is there some data/papers/methods I'm missing?

winterismute 12y ago

I had the privilege of meeting Carlo Rovelli (who attended university in my hometown, many years before me) in a public event targeting people that, like me, were at the time finishing high school and had to choose what to do with their lives. We showed up already bored, waiting for the usual adults who would explain us why to study this and not that, what are the many possible career paths achievable by that, which economic sectors were growing and how, and so on. In fact, some of the speakers did mostly that. On the contrary, Rovelli started to explain how he did not know what to do after school, and that he went to university initially because his family would have forced him to work as a plumber with his uncle if he decided not to go. He then advised us to choose to do only what we feel passionate about, and to distrust whoever, truth in hand, will explain us that by studying X we will be able to enter sector Y and achieve great success in life. It can seem trivial stuff, but when you are 18 and are being told those things by a humble but successful person, it really empowers you. He is also fairly easy to "approach", he himself came to speak to us after the event, joking about the fact we should not cut our hair "just to get a job" (I haven't since then, and I am 28 and working), hence I am not surprised he answers to people's comment on the interview, or that he is active on physics.stackexchange, for example. I have studied computer science and got interested in physics and philosophy of science thanks to him, he kind of embodies my idea of science, and of civil responsibility, and I must say I have been a bit disappointed to see that also the academic world is full of "scientists" that underestimate the value of philosophy or other related subjects, or that teach students not to question "too much" what they are doing, preventing them to really see the "big picture" behind knowledge.

mparr4 12y ago

I studied physics at the University of Maryland, one of the better (top 20) physics programs in the US. I was surprised at how often questions were answered with "that's for the philosophers to think about." Granted, there's a lot of material to cover, I don't think that's an appropriate response–especially when delivered with contempt, as it typically was.

bkcooper 12y ago
What are some examples of the questions that got this answer?
- Balgair 12y ago
  "So wait, if QM says you can be everywhere at once, are you?" "If GR means all the laws are related to the reference frame, does that mean all the things in it are relative too, like religion?" "What if Dark matter really is more than just stuff that falls down. What if there are intelligent clouds there? What are their ethics like?" "No but really, what is the definition of life?" "Ok, so fetal stem cells, but what if we took a blood sem cell and then back tracked that into a fetal one. Is that wrong?" All of these can take the 'Copenhagen Interpretation' given to undergrads. The Copenhagen Interpretation states: Shut up and calculate.
mtdewcmu 12y ago
Coming from a professor, I, myself, would always presume that there was a worthwhile lesson in those kinds of short remarks. It sounds like they were possibly steering students away from questions that could not be resolved empirically, which would place them outside the scope of physics; those kinds of questions could also be debated endlessly and derail the class.

jorangreef 12y ago

The interview tends towards scientism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism), "the belief in the universal applicability of the scientific method and approach, and the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning to the exclusion of other viewpoints" or methods, for example the historical method. As a result, Rovelli ventures outside his circle of competence when he views Christianity as a set of "written-down beliefs" disconnected from actual historical events. In fact, for someone interested in ancient history, the primary and secondary sources for understanding the historical origin of Christianity tell a remarkably different story, namely that there is a very strong connection between the historical person of Christ and the people that followed him. Specifically, that these people followed him on the basis of his historical person, his death and resurrection, of which they were fully convinced, often at great personal cost. As Paul of Tarsus said under trial, being someone who had previously physically persecuted the early Christians: "Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead?" For Paul, it was not a question of probability or "how often does this happen every day" (which would be frequentism), but of historical happening, did it happen? He, like Thomas, would not follow the risen Christ unless he saw him himself, and this is what he (according to the sources), amongst others, claimed to have happened. So that Christians today (as with Christians then) are Christians on the basis of their understanding and acceptance of the historicity and meaning of the events concerning Christ. For Paul's own words, and a remarkable piece of ancient history, see his letter to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 15:3-9. Note also that our knowledge of Christ as an actual historical person is not limited to the writings of those that followed him and were devoted to him. For a good introduction to the historical method and its application to Christ, see Paul Barnett, historian, "Jesus and the Logic of History": http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-History-Studies-Biblical-Theology/dp/0830826033 http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-History-Studies-Biblical-Theolog...

cdi 12y ago
>He, like Thomas, would not follow the risen Christ unless he saw him himself An extraordinary statement without evidence. People today have all kinds of beliefs without evidence. People also could lie, be pressured into belief by conformity, have hallucinations, etc. Not to mention people 2000 years ago didn't have todays strict standards delineating fact from beliefs. There are numerous contradictions and discrepancies in these "accounts". The historicity of Jesus' resurrection is very much in doubt by the preeminent new testament scholars: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHJE7cetkB4#t=81 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHJE7cetkB4#t=81 And indeed the historical method can't be seriously compared to the scientific method, because it is vulnerable to errors in the accounts, falsification, forgery, intentional lying, biased interpretation. While science relies on repeatability.

ekm2 12y ago

This reminds me of a quote by Richard Feynman: Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds

acornax 12y ago
Kind of a bad quote. Ornithology would be useful to birds if they could understand it.
- trhway 12y ago
  primary example of birds benefiting from ornithology :) http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/06/vladimir-putin-cranes-hang-glider http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/06/vladimir-putin-... If only some philosopher of science could lead the scientists the same way ( to the former USSR citizens - "poruchik, molchat!" :)

QuantumChaos 12y ago

I really liked this article. The author gave real substantive answers to almost all the questions. I would have liked to have more detail on his critique of the "guess and check" approach to science. My own opinion is that there is a very good reason why scientific progress follows the pattern he describes, of new theories being based on either new experiments, or in depth analysis of existing theories. The reason is that science relies on belief in objective reality, and yet we don't know what objective reality is. So in order to reason about what the universe really is, the best and only starting point is our current model(s) of physics. The moment we make an assumption about what reality is that isn't based in physical theory, we are liable to be wrong. For example, Newton was criticized for his theory of gravity, because people knew that reality was composed of little machine-like objects, interacting at a microscopic scale. There was no room in this worldview for Newton's "occult" force of gravity which acted at a distance.